Retirement Money From an Old Job: Where to Look, Free

General information only. This page explains the free government searches for forgotten retirement benefits. It cannot tell you whether you are owed anything — only a plan administrator can decide that. This page collects nothing and asks for nothing.

Route 1: The Labor Department's Lost and Found

The Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database is run by the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), part of the U.S. Department of Labor. Congress ordered it built in Section 303 of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022. You search at lostandfound.dol.gov.

• How you get in: You must prove your identity through Login.gov with a state-issued ID or driver's license. That is deliberate — the search is tied to your own Social Security number, and only you can search it. Nobody else, including Labor Department staff, is allowed to search it for you.
• What it shows: A list of retirement plans linked to your Social Security number, with contact information for each plan's administrator.
• What it does not do — in the Labor Department's own words: "This system is an information database only. It does not decide eligibility for retirement benefits, process benefit applications, or pay any current or future benefits."
• A listing is not a promise. The Labor Department is plain about this: a plan appearing in your results means you participated in it at some point. The benefit may already have been paid out, rolled into another account, or converted to an annuity. Only the plan administrator can tell you whether anything is still owed.
• Some records are old. The database includes historical records from the Social Security Administration's Form 8955-SSA filings, and the Labor Department warns some may be outdated — a 2005 filing, for example, may not reflect a plan merger or a new administrator.
• No result is not the end. Plan administrators supply the data, and coverage is still growing. If the database finds nothing, contact the plan administrator at your former employer or union directly. If you cannot reach them, an EBSA Benefits Advisor can help you locate them: 1-866-444-3272, or AskEBSA.dol.gov. (Benefits Advisors cannot see inside the Lost and Found database itself.)

One safety note straight from the Labor Department: the Department of Labor will never call, text, or email you to ask for your password or one-time passcode. Anyone who does is not the Labor Department.

Route 2: PBGC — for pension plans that ended

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the federal agency that insures private-sector defined-benefit pension plans (the traditional kind that promise a monthly amount). When a plan ends and some people cannot be found, their money does not vanish:

• Unclaimed benefits database and Unclaimed Pensions List. PBGC keeps a searchable database of unclaimed retirement benefits and posts an Unclaimed Pensions List on its website, at pbgc.gov, so people can check for themselves.
• Trusteed plans. If your old employer's plan failed and PBGC took it over, PBGC's trusteed-plan search shows whether your plan is one of them.
• Missing Participants Program. When a healthy plan ends but cannot locate everyone, the plan must either buy an annuity in the missing person's name or send the money to PBGC to hold until the person is found. PBGC keeps databases of these plans too.
• The limits, honestly: PBGC covers defined-benefit plans. It does not hold 401(k) money (except the slice that reaches it through the Missing Participants Program when a 401(k) plan terminates), and it does not have information on individuals in multiemployer (union multi-company) plans. Government and church plans are outside this system — those have their own routes.

What neither database covers

• IRAs are not in the Labor Department database. A forgotten IRA is usually found through the bank or brokerage that holds it, or through your state's unclaimed property search if the account was turned over to the state.
• Government and church retirement plans sit outside both systems.
• Money already sent to a state. Uncashed distribution checks and abandoned accounts can end up with a state unclaimed property office — search the official site of every state you have lived or worked in (Oklahoma's is yourmoney.ok.gov).